Greetings everybody!~ And welcome to this weeks NXT Reduxapalooza, which is a new term I’m coining because it sounds about as messy as I am. If you’ll recall, last week we saw the huggable bundle of sunshine, Bayley, take down the voiceover themed glitter blizzard, Alexa Bliss… but that wasn’t the full story.
After the match, Bayley called Charlotte out from the back and challenged her to a rematch from their fantastic showing at Takeover II. Being that Takeover II was the moment Bayley earned Charlotte’s respect, she obliged and the challenge was accepted. THIS, ladies and gents, means that tonights NXT will feature the rematch of all rematches as Bayley goes one on one with Charlotte for the Womens Championship and looks to dethrone the genetically superior Diva all while remaining the joyful messiah we all know and love.
Can she do this? Well if you want to continue living in a world where that question has no answer, go ahead and X this redux now… buuuutttt, if you want to find out, scroll on down, press play, and watch everything I’m about to type unfold before your very own eyeballs.
My jam!
We head to the Full Sail arena, as out pops Bayley who makes her grand entrance into the ring where she stands alongside announcer, JoJo. Following this tassel adorned heart melting walk down the isle, the Flair-Style club mix beat drops and Charlotte struts out from the back. She splits inside the ring, posing with her title as JoJo begins the special title match intros!
The referee holds the title up on display, as Charlotte jolts off the ropes and the two lock up. Charlotte quickly overpowers Bayley, but they do manage to trade an advantage with one another. Bayley ducks a corrner attack and goes for a quick batch of pinning combinations, all generating just nearfalls until Charlotte clocks her in the face. Elbow by Bayley and an off the ropes arm drag! A pair of flipping ones to boot, that of which send Charlotte outside the ring to recover.
Charlotte now steps back in the ring and begins targeting the ankle as the crowd gets firmly behind Bayley. Bayley with a nice flip! Now a backslide attempt… but Charlotte holds strong. Bayley now hits an arm drag and starts working the arm. Another backslide attempt, but Charlotte scores a huge move to Bayley’s leg, continuing to target it like a cheetah hunting its prey. Oh, hey random commercial.
Now that the commercial ends, we head back to Charlotte continuing her domination as she heads to the turnbuckle and bashes Bayley’s leg into the ring post! Charlotte now locks in a figure four! And she bridges! Yesssss! Make that your finisher PLEASE.
Bayley breaks the bridge and rolls over, alleviating the pain and putting it on Charlotte until she breaks it by grabbing the ropes. Charlotte misses a huge knee! Bayley is trying to mount the comeback. The crowd is getting behind her. Yes! Bayley with some corner offense and leaps off with a huge spinning elbow. One! Two! No. Charlotte can’t believe this is happening, but she manages to just escape out of a bodyslam attempt into her new sit out neckbreaker transition, then the Natural Selection for the victory.
Bayley is distraught. Stop doing this to me NXT, I can’t handle an upset young Bayley.
Charlotte thanks her after the match as the two embrace in a hug, and it starts to make me feel a little better.
We head to the tape for the next installment of Carmella(!!!!)’s training. And I am so beyond excited about this. The three of them (she, Enzo and Cass) arrive at the performance center by themselves to see how Carmella can fare inside an actual ring. She’s ready, but not before we get a bit of shade thrown from Cass to Enzo. Enzo helps Carmella lock up, but it ends up being a trick for her to feel up his bicep and only one of them looks to enjoy that. He continues to downplay her abilities, as she pushes him off and he starts smelling her hair! This sparks her rage to grow to such a high level she dropkicks him out of the ring behind his back! Enzo again asks Cass to not post this video anywhere, as we continue enjoying the brilliance that is our Staten Island Princess.
Also! There was a segment backstage involving Bayley, Devin Taylor and Sasha Banks but WWE loves to make my life miserable and only aired it on the network version of the episode. I have sat with a finished redux and given the (wonderful, kind, doesn’t owe me anything… I’m just venting) Internet over 24 hours to produce video of this, but no luck. Chances are the only version that will have it is on Hulu (please check that one out!) where the episode is currently only available for Hulu Plus subscribers. And again, chances are also that the moment I upload this redux, they’ll make it available for free because that’s my luck in a nutshell.
Thoughts: I absolutely positively insanely loved this match! I think it meshes perfectly as a second outing following their Takeover showing because they each brought something different to the table. Takeover had that raw emotion of Bayley wanting to be champion so bad she couldn’t even speak about it without bursting into tears. The crowd wanted her to win more than life itself, and being that it was on a live special, we didn’t know what was going to happen so there was that sense of unpredictability. Tonight didn’t have all of that extra stuff, but what it did have was the action.
I loved how Bayley just brought everything she had, whereas Charlotte changed it up a bit and realized she didn’t need to do her risky tactics like the moonsault at Takeover… she just needed to cut Bayley off at any chance she got. Working over the leg also made The Natural Selection come off all the more impactful because I could believe that Bayley’s legs were pretty much feeling like jelly and thus she couldn’t get up in time to avoid it after the neckbreaker set up.
And do I even need to comment on that amazing bridged figure four? I don’t ask for much, but why on earth isn’t this Charlotte’s finisher? Or at least one of them? It’s absolutely everything, taking her father’s move but putting a modern spin on it to make it her own, and in a way that looks even more painful and impressive. WWE, don’t even give me that mess of a hold The Miz wobbles on someone as an excuse after seeing Charlotte’s bridged version. Tell him to go back to his first move and stop giving me the injustice of a world where this isn’t how her matches end.
And in terms of the Carmella video, it’s again the absolute perfect way to bring her in. These three have chemistry and a spark about them that you just can’t teach. I can’t even pinpoint which of them steals the scenes because they all do! Enzo’s comments about Carmella are degrading, but I love that what they’re doing is pissing her off to get her to the point you need to be at if you want to fight. It’s so strangely cool at how Enzo has sort of mastered this character of being a horrible person with a lot of what he says, yet oddly likable in the process. And actually likable too, not the main roster version where they want someone with no redeeming qualities to come off likable and be cheered. I can’t hate him because he and Cass are hilarious and they walk around like two lovable goofs… which is exactly where Carmella fits in because she can play the (still kind of hilariously exaggerated) straight-man to their comedy. The Jim Halpert to their Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute if you will. It works so well and I’m clamoring to get them in the actual Full Sail arena even though I may weep when we ultimately don’t get to see these fun cell phone recorded segments anymore. Can Devin Taylor just adopt Cass’s iPhone (or Android) and film all of her interviews this way?
